Monday, 2 June 2014

Shaping the centerboard

I know I only glued the laminations together yesterday, but today has been a pretty big one, so I thought another post was the go. That and Perry told me that I really should stop working before I fall over :)

What a great cardio workout! I've found the perfect antidote to tuck-shop lady arms, in the form of my nice Stanley no. 4 plane. I tried my new no. 5, but found the extra weight harder to work with, so went back to my no. 4. It all started innocently enough. I cut out the profile of the board, and planed the board nice and smooth, then ruled some center lines down the board and started removing material from the leading edge:

After about eight hours of planing, my workshop started to look like a bomb had gone off:

The secret to successful planing is to remember to sharpen the plane iron often. Every time I started to get tired, I'd run the iron over the whetstone while I had a break, then when I went back to it it was easy again. I think I sharpened my iron about five times today. In terms of effort, I feel like I've just ridden about 80km. I'll sleep really well tonight.

So I reckon it's about 80% there. I went at it with some 80 grit emery to smooth things out, and it's looking pretty good. I think on payday I'll go buy myself a power sander. Note the extra little bit of Jarrah at the bottom of the leading edge. This is the area where I think the board will cop the most knocks, so I wanted it extra strong:

Check out the shavings. Planing with a proper hand plane like this is a lot like sculpting. The wood knows it wants to be a foil. You and the plane are there to help it achieve it's goal. It's pretty obvious where the non-foil bits are, so you work the plane over them, and it gets gradually closer to shape. Very rewarding.

After a day's work the profile is looking reasonably foil shaped. I have lots of motivation to remove all the unnecessary material. Otherwise I'll have to add more lead to get it to sink, and I really don't want to resort to that:

Once the shaping is done I'll add some of this stuff. It's unidirectional carbon fibre tape, and should make it reasonably hard to break:

Then do the pivot hole and the lifting bit, and this part's knocked over :)